A 15-year entertainment veteran with an advanced college degree and deep industry experience, this has been my worst corporate entertainment experience ever. After excepting an offer from DISH, I relocated my family across the country to what seemed a fantastic job opportunity. And while the job itself was interesting, it did not offset the horrible framework DISH sets for it's employees on the Vice President level. The highlights in a nutshell:1. no health insurance for the first three month, after that only ONE insurance plan to choose from with a total out-of-pocket deductible of $12,000. 2. Obscene rules: The infamous 9 o'clock rule I discovered on my first day, meaning that if for whatever reason (black ice, sick child, accident) you come in 30 seconds past 9am and swipe your badge entering the building, an email will be triggered to your supervisor who then has to counsel you on your shortcoming and will berate you how this will affect your career in a negative manner. Simply unacceptable on the executive level. 3. Take a nearby hotel - on your own dime. Yes, that is was what I was told when we had several blizzards sweeping through the county resulting in black ice this winter, this making me drive to work for a two-hour journey at 6:15am in order to avoid the 9am public shunning. 4. Culture of fear: Even on the executive level, every website you visit (vendors and business partners included) will me monitored, every email tracked and a culture of fear is created I have never seen anywhere else before or since. 5. 401 K and other benefits: The vacation time is laughable and the "generorus" 5 percent capped at $2500 401K contribution, which will be pulled if you leave the company 5 years prior to your start date is ridiculous. 6. Hire and Fire: The company is a revolving door. People come and go constantly and once one finds something even marginally better, they are gone. The C-level's only response: If you don't like it here, you can leave. Well, I left.

Usually 4 day work week. Pay is decent. Raises are based on your performance. You don't have to pay for your uniform, just your boots.

Cons

You work in the elements. Some of the metrics you have to hit in order to get a bonus are completely out of your control. You are nothing but a number. They say they promote from within but unless you are around management everyday, you get overlooked.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Don't forget about the little people that work their butts off to pay your salary!

Decent training and support. Co workers great to work with. Generally all with good work ethic. Company provides uniforms, vehicles and tooling to complete installations professionally.

Cons

Extreme micro-management. Every year the company expects more from their employees while devising ways to make bonus structure harder to achieve.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

The company has been growing and is becoming more successful as a result of the dedicated job performance of its employees. Chipping away at our earning ability should not be a strategy to increase the company bottom line.

Talent Planning is alive and well. Everyone must rate on a Bell Curve. Completely unfair appraisals. Someone will be put into the top and bottom 10%, whether they deserve it or not, the rest of your peers will get an average review. The worst part was people removed "without cause". Quarterly reviews are glaring....then, at your annual review, you get a "does not meet standards", backed up by nothing, to meet Talent Planning numbers for the year. What this means: supervisors try to rate fairly, while senior executives, "calibrate" people out of the company to trim the budget every year. The only issue there....if you're not a senior executive, you will be let go without warning. You can be cut at any time for any reason. Learn from experience....don't work here. DISH Culture = Work yourself to death...for no overtime and no promotion opportunity.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Stop telling employees that talent planning is to make the individual better, when it's really a tool for DISH to meet a $ "bottom line". End LEAD training: everyone hated it, and no one believes it...or uses it. Stop telling employees "DISH Cares"...when you don't. You preach "confront reality"...but the company doesn't. Here's the reality of DISH's message to employees: "We will use you up and throw you away". It doesn't matter if you obfuscate it with terms like, "we're a results-based company".

Paid training and a full time schedule, which is a rarity among non-skilled jobs in the area. While not indicative of a larger benefit structure, they do allow you to accrue paid time off and as of the time of this review, free DISH service. It's relatively easy to get hired - they're only selectively selective. If you can manage it, there is limited room to grow in the company. The site frequently tried to offer incentives and morale boosters, especially around the holidays and in relation to overtime needs. My coworkers and individuals of the support and training staff were truly some of the kindest and most helpful people I've had the pleasure of working with.

Cons

Training hardly prepared us for the actual floor. Basically we had to relearn everything in the thick of it and readjust from the mindset of customer experience to meeting impossible metrics. The management is condescending. Actual benefits are almost non-existent. The gamification is smug. Work-life balance IS non existent. The attendance policy is inflexible. There is a long list of things one must do to avoid getting fired. The company has an extreme amount of turnover. They instated mandatory overtime and yet every morning meeting was filled with a list of "behaviors" that we must avoid because they were "separating" agents on the spot if said behaviors were observed. The company encourages the bad behaviors of its customers. The squeaky wheel get the grease and these wheels know it, which leads to a lot of unnecessary verbal abuse. Instead of allowing agents to use best judgement in handling a call, the system is set up in such a way that constantly led to useless escalations, increased call times, and something far from first call resolution. Improper training and lack of support, especially in regards to technical aspects of the service, also contributes to these factors. In an effort to meet performance standards, many agents take shortcuts which creates a lot of unhappy customers. DISH constantly talked about being a "family" and encouraged workers to take on as much overtime as possible to help out the "team." The cult-like rhetoric of slavish devotion is certainly one sided. Employees are expendable and interchangeable to them. They talk of setting expectations - but they don't do it properly for their customers or their employees.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Remove the thumb print scanners, do away with mandatory overtime, pay a wage commensurate to the work being done, improve benefits, promote an actual work life balance, make training more consistent with expectations of the actual job, revisit policies that seem to reward bad behaviors in customers, and allow more freedom in how the agents handle calls.

fellow techs..all the tech were great to work with..we all bond together and help each other.

Cons

management..they dont care about techs..to them techs are a dime a dozen..10 was fired in the short time i was there..

Advice to ManagementAdvice

what goes around comes around...its only a matter of time before you go out of business..ever tech you mistreat has friends and family..the word is getting out and soon your 14 percent will drop to 12, 11, 10 and so on..i for one will never get dish again

Staff were professional and seemed like a great group to work with... until they made me an offer.

Cons

I had seen all the bad reviews of DISH and decided to interview anyway, as it seemed to be challenging work.

Before my interviews (3) and assessment, the recruiter sent me a list of "comprehensive" benefits, which were the worst I've ever seen. $2500/$5000 deductible on health plan with minimal FSA/HSA contributions, $2500 cap on retirement with only 50% match and a FIVE YEAR vesting schedule, benefits delayed for 2-3 months after start (hello Affordable Healthcare Act penalties). These benefits aren't worth $0.50 a paycheck, let alone $50 a paycheck.

I then found out there was no bonus/incentive plan offered, and I had a hunch what was coming next...

I discussed salary with the recruiter - she seemed content with my expectations and also added that "managers have tons of leverage with salary."

Shortcut to the end: they offer me a significant amount, 10% less than the MINIMUM I asked for BEFORE I was alerted to how horrible their benefits were. Compounded with no bonus and long, grueling hours in a corporate office on the other side of town, it was a no brainer. They seemed shocked, when I declined...

Have some respect for yourself and keep looking. If you don't care, the company definitely won't.